JOHNNY PERFECT

Johnny Perfect is a private investigator.

Amateur one, that is. At least that is what the blurb for his three adventures say about him. In argument against that, he has no license or legal authorization and he has no office for his non-existent clients to come to to hire him. But calling himself a PI is a whole lot more impressive sounding than "John E. Perfect, DEALER IN ANTIQUES AND BRIC A BRAC, of Portobello Road, W.10". That is the real line of work of Perfect when we first meet him - antiques dealer, considerably less impressive and, truth be told, not that lucrative; just ask his stressed-out bank manager.

And Perfect would need something impressive to lift his spirits most days, especially since when he looks in the mirror and does not really like what he sees. "Pale skin, bags threatening to appear under the grey eyes and big sort of mouth. The nose was just a nose, like ten million others. I used to think I was not a bad looking guy, but that was many cases of Scotch ago".

When we meet him, he is traveling from one auction house looking for something he might be able to sell at a different auction house nearer London for enough money to make it all worthwhile. This is pretty far cry from the PI work he would like to imagine he was doing and a whole lot further from any sort of spy work that would qualify him for being listed here. Times will change, though and he will soon get the opportunity to do a lot of traveling to some pretty special places. And those trips will present chances to become intimate with a good number of very desirable women.

And that brings us to the crux of what it means to be Johnny Perfect. He is a hound-dog. He is constantly on the hunt for a bit of spare cash and a bit of hanky-panky and whatever might be said by him about his looks, he is not so bad looking that he does not get appreciated by those women. Unfortunately, those women are sometimes associated with some very bad men who are involved in doing some very bad things and Perfect lands in the middle of trouble so often, his adventures each has the word in them.

Luckily for Perfect, he is also quite cowardly so while braver men (and apparently most men qualify as braver than he) might try to fix things, Perfect would prefer to no risk his neck. Too bad those bad guys are not so willing to let him walk.

One blurb about Perfect has listed him as "cowardly and lecherous". It is always interesting to watch which trait will win out.

This series really should be called spy-adjacent as it sort of fits the criteria for membership in this compendium and sort of does not. But when you look at the covers - and I did ... a lot! - you would come to the same conclusion I did that it belonged here.

My comment above about Perfect being 'cowardly and lecherous' is dead on. Now he is not a hide-under-the-bed kind of coward but he he definitely does not like it when things for sideways and they do that a lot. He makes up for his good sense or timidity (depends on who you ask) but being always and forever the lecher. There is not a shapely lass anywhere that he would not put the moves on, even considering the other half of that description (hint, the cowardly part).

One thing you might not expect from books with these covers about a character like I just described is how well they are written. I was very impressed and enjoyed them a great deal.